Archive for October, 2013

From Maya Deren to James Cameron, experimentation has long been considered an important element in the filmmaking process. It’s all about taking chances, and the Glass City’s creative class wants in on the act.

Timothy Gaewsky

The Launch Pad Cooperative is debuting its Experimental Video Festival beginning Nov. 9.
The inaugural event is the creation of Launch Pad founder Timothy Gaewsky, himself an accomplished experimental filmmaker whose work has been shown at festivals around the world.
“I had spent of number of years creating my own video work. From the beginning I was highly influenced by the Dadaists, the Surrealists, early performance artists, and the main reason I decided to start this festival is because I looked around and I didn’t really see anything like it here. I just wanted to offer something new, something different in our community, but I wasn’t really sure how many people would respond. But it’s been really great, I’m very excited,” Gaewsky said. “The festival has received more than 80 entries from all over the country since submissions were opened on Sept. 16.”
This year’s participants include Casey Malone, Cory Kram, Hye Young Kim, S/N Coalition, Jenny Curtis, Joshua Zerangue, Justin Lincoln, Krista Caballero, Patrick Moser, Coalfather Industries, Deirdre Sargent, Ellen Mueller, Jake Scharbach, Kara Dunne, Maura Jasper, Paul Shortt, Scott Turri, Tom Whitton, Yana Sakellion, Christie Blizard, Erin Garber-Pearson and Gaewsky.
According to festival requirements as stated on the Launch Pad website, all videos were created between 2007-13 and are no more than seven minutes in length. Artists were allowed to submit up to three entries.
The two-night event also features screenings on Nov. 16. Both evenings will run from 7-10 p.m. and are free and open to the public.
“I want people to come away with a greater appreciation of video as an art form, and a wider awareness of the variety of work that’s out there,” Gaewsky said. “Over the years, as I’ve had more space to work, I’ve integrated video into my installation work, which has been really fun and opened things up for me and I just want to offer a venue for other artists like myself, who want to test the boundaries of their work.”
Launch Pad Cooperative is located at 911 Jefferson Ave.
For more information, visit the web sitewww.launchpadcooperative.com.

The cover for Sat. Nite Duets’ third album “Electric Manland” consists of more than 50 cutouts. Inspired by The Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” it even includes the drum from the “Lonely Hearts” album cover. The collage features famous icons and characters that have some significance for the band.

Sat. Nite Duets

“We like [‘Sgt. Pepper’s’], but I wouldn’t call it a favorite,” said drummer Joe Guszkowski. “I think we were just more interested in the concept of the artwork.”
Some faces that appear on the album cover include Elton John, David Bowie, Ellen DeGeneres, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Batman.
“The cover is just a collection of people and friends of ours that we kind of look up to or that influence the album in some way,” Guszkowski said. “We all contributed; we all got to pick a few people that we wanted to be on the cover.”
The foreground features Vanna White in front of a “Wheel of Fortune” board, which spells out the album’s title. The band would often watch the game show during the months spent recording.
“It just became part of our daily routine,” Guszkowski said. “Things in our daily life were kind of absorbed into the album cover.”
Shrek also appears on the cover.
“It’s sort of just a running joke,” Guszkowski said. “One of us really likes ‘Shrek’ and always wants to watch ‘Shrek’; one of us really hates ‘Shrek’ and never wants to watch [it]. It comes up a lot.”
Beyoncé also makes an appearance.
“She’s just gotta be there,” Guszkowski said.

Electric Manland album cover

The Milwaukee band formed while the members were in college after merging their two high school bands, Two Kids Get New Books and Boy Scouts. The two bands combined as a five-piece in 2009.
The band’s music falls somewhere between Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Buffett on the roundtable of rock ’n’ roll.
“We were looking back a little further into the past,” Guszkowski said. “I think the spirit of those guys is in there.”
The 11-track album includes songs like “The Three Wisemen,” “I Have The Wine” and “Women’s Prison” and features added strings and trumpet on some tracks. Guszkowski said the band’s three albums show progression.
“We don’t really talk about … what we want things to sound like. We just want that to progress naturally,” he said. “I do think all of us were committed to making a more rock record.”
“Electric Manland” is heavier rock ’n’ roll than their other work, described by the band as “louder, slicker and more ambitious” than anything they’ve done before. The album is available on satnite
duets.bandcamp.com. The digital copy costs $3 and the vinyl LP costs $12. Physical copies of the album will be available at the band’s shows.
The band has embarked on an 18-date tour to celebrate the album’s release. The band will play 9 p.m. Nov. 1 at Ottawa Tavern, 1817 Adams S., with four other acts: Heavy Color, Rollergirl, Pastel Arsenal and Alan Liezerman.
The band has played at Ottawa Tavern twice before and are Guszkowski said they are looking forward to returning to the venue.

University of Toledo Professor Emeritus Joel Lipman has learned from nationally known poets who told him to keep his focus local. That is his intention with ABRACADABRA Studio of Poetics.

Joel Lipman

“I want to build a local poetry community,” Lipman said. “My goals as a publishing poet were not to reach everybody, but to reach people that somehow I happen to cross paths with.”
Lipman came to Toledo in 1975 after already being involved in the poetry community in Buffalo and Chicago. He assumed a position in UT’s Department of English Language and Literature to teach creative writing.
Opening ABRACADABRA has been a family affair. His son Eli is a partner while his daughter Samantha designed the website.
“ABRACADABRA gave me a chance to plug into my three kids,” Lipman said.
Eli opened the Toledo former coffee shop The Ground Level in 2009, which included studios upstairs for developing work. Lipman said he wanted to be part of that venture, but was busy.
“I’m 71 years old and had a very active, artistic life for a very long time; a very satisfying, rewarding career at the University of Toledo,” Lipman said. “I’m not a person who carries regrets, but I said I’m not going to let that happen again.”
Lipman was inspired to move further with his idea for ABRACADABRA while visiting his other son Jesse, a slam poet who lives in Honolulu, as he competed in the National Poetry Slam Finals in Boston.
“It’s a national movement with enormous participation,” Lipman said. “Going there and seeing the vibrancy … made me aware of the fact that there was a huge appetite for poetry in the country.”
As a founding co-director of the Toledo Poets Center, over the years Lipman has planned many successful poetry readings.
“But one thing that nagged at me was the audience, and this isn’t a condemnation, this is a self-directed criticism. The audience never seemed to mature. They never seemed to expect more,” Lipman said.
When he retired in 2012, he set out a goal to make a center where writers can elevate themselves in poetry.
He took inspiration from Lois-Ann Yamanaka, a poet he met who had opened a school in Hawaii called Na’au.
“I really liked what she was up to,” he said.
The studio will provide small once-a-week workshops for beginner poets and practicing writers. Lipman wants to offer conversations about specific, selected topics concerning poetry. He also wants to stay away from the academic curriculum he had to work with as a professor. There will be no tests.
“I’ve done my academic work; I’ve done my curriculum-based stuff for 40 years,” he said. “What that means for me is a chance to teach people about poetry in ways that being on a university didn’t allow me the opportunity to.”
He also looks forward to offering a tutoring service for anyone interested in one-on-one instruction. Lipman wants those who complete ABRACADABRA to host poetry readings, invite poets to town from other communities or start literary magazines, either in print or online.
Lipman remembers the first time he was introduced to poetry in school. He was a junior in high school and was assigned to read “John Brown’s Body” by Stephen Vincent Benet. Lipman said he wants to teach how he was taught when he studied under Pulitzer Prize winners Gwendolyn Brooks and James Wright.
“At ABRACADABRA, I want to wave the magic wand of my educational past over the people who are drawn to the studio,” Lipman said. “I think ABRACADABRA can contribute to that richness of cultural and entertainment environment.”
He added that he wants the studio to become part of the Downtown arts community.
For more information on classes, complete a response form on abracadabrapoetry.com or contact Lipman at (419) 490-4384. More than 30 people have contacted Lipman with interest. Workshops, conversations and tutorials are forming and will begin early in November.

“Lettice and Lovage” will open Nov. 1 at The Village Players Theatre as the second show of the season — a show director Jeff Albright has wanted to do since seeing it on Broadway in the early 1990s.
“When The Village Players asked me to submit plays to direct this season, it was one of the ones I submitted,” Albright said. “It’s sort of been on my bucket list for plays to direct.”
Albright saw British actress Maggie Smith portray Lettice Douffet in the production; she won the 1990 Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her portrayal of the eccentric tour guide. Albright said it was the fragility of the role that spoke to him when he saw it on Broadway.
For The Village Players, the role is filled by Barbara Barkan, who Albright describes as “the Maggie Smith of Toledo.”
“Maggie Smith is an incredible actress, so I enjoyed seeing it for that,” Albright said. “[Barkan] is pretty incredible. It’s a huge role; she’s offstage for maybe five minutes of the play. The rest of it is her onstage so it’s a pretty formidable role.”
Albright said the character is a lot for anyone to take on.
“The role itself is challenging because it’s like running a marathon,” he said. “Emotionally, the character goes through different changes. It’s a pretty intense role although it’s a comedy.”
Albright’s favorite part of the play is the message it conveys. Albright said he usually chooses plays to direct that have messages that are important to him. This is his second time directing a show at The Village Players; he last acted with the theater in 1981.
Other cast members include Cindy Bilby as Lotte Schoen, Samanthia Rousos as Miss Framer, Joe Capucini as Mr. Bardolph and Bill Perry as Surly Man.
The play follows Lettice Douffet, an expert on Elizabethan cuisine and medieval weaponry, as she works as a tour guide at Fustian House in London, according to a news release. Douffet often embellishes history, ultimately leading to her firing by Schoen. The show goes on to show her fight for her job.
The comedy was written by Peter Shaffer, author of “Equus” and “Amadeus.”
Albright said the production calls for three elaborate sets.
“That’s the most challenging aspect for a small theater,” he said.
The production will run Nov. 1-16 at the Village Players Theatre, 2740 Upton Ave. For tickets, call (419) 472-6817 or visit thevillageplayers.org/ticketing.htm.

At a recent gig, I was surprised when the headliner thanked me for “being a clean comic — you don’t see that much these days.”
Clean? I talk about finding used condoms in a parking lot in my act. I discuss “morning wood” and self-gratification near the end of my set. And I made passing reference to the sex drive of a blue-haired old lady in the front row. If anything, I thought I’d crossed the line a couple times.

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But apparently the line has moved. Go to any open mic now, with new and untested comics, and you’ll hear jokes about abortion, rape, racism and enough F-bombs to send Lenny Bruce scampering back to charm school. It’s a brave new world, ushered in by YouTube, satellite radio and unfettered access to a new school of shock comics like Anthony Jeselnik and Daniel Tosh.
There’s an art to pushing the envelope. You have to establish a relationship with an audience before you bludgeon them with a shocking topic or an offensive joke. This upsets some would-be comics. The idea of easing an audience into a topic, or toning it down, sets off a Pavlovian cry of “censorship!” They reason that if a crowd reacts badly to something, it’s the crowd — it couldn’t possibly be their gem of a joke.
First of all, the same freedom that lets you say what you want lets them react how they want. That’s the nature of public performance. Once it’s left your mouth, it’s not yours anymore and your listeners can interpret, react, love or hate as they see fit.
Secondly, you have to consider your venue. Open mic night in a raucous dive bar? Let the filth fly. But I was in a room full of middle-aged, small-town folks who paid good money to laugh and enjoy their night out — and paid me to entertain.
The word “entertainer” doesn’t get used much any more, but if you take the money, that’s your job. Don’t pander or dumb down what you do, but if what you do is guaranteed to ruin those people’s Saturday night, and that’s the only trick in your bag, stay home.
There are those who’d find it fun to take the gig, get the money, then go in and offend everyone in the room on purpose. Those kinds of comics generally consider themselves anarchists, free spirits or rebellious artists. I prefer to call them “assholes.” See how I waited till the end to cuss? Ebb and flow.
Know your crowd, respect your crowd, don’t be a jerk. Simple!

Myron St. John harbors a secret: he once ensured the safety and security of the Caped Crusader himself, Adam West. After a chance encounter with the actor while working at a 1975 car show in Grand Rapids, Mich., St. John won the coveted job of watching Batman’s back.

A signed photo of Adam West given to Toledo native Myron St. John. Photo courtesy Myron St. John

“It was on a Saturday,” said St. John said, a Toledo native. “And I noticed that there was nobody onstage with Adam, and he kept standing up every couple minutes, looking around left and right, and there were lines of people to see him. I’m watching this for a few minutes and, I don’t know why, but I just got the feeling that he needed something and there was nobody from the show there. I came over and I hopped the line and I walked onstage and said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. West. Is there anything I can help you with?’ He leaned over and he goes, ‘Yes, I’ve really got to use the bathroom.’ I said, ‘OK, let me take care of this.
“So, I grabbed a microphone and I said, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, Batman has just received a call from Commissioner Gordon, and he’s got to take it. He’ll be back in 15 minutes. Don’t go away.’ He went offstage, and he came out and he goes, ‘Oh, that was great. Thanks so much.’ We started talking and he said, ‘I owe you. Let me take you to dinner tonight.’ I said, ‘Well, OK,’ because we were all staying in the same hotel. So, that night, we were talking, and he said, ‘You know, I could really use a guy like you because I can’t depend on these people,’ and I said, ‘Oh, sure.’”
Within one week, St. John was working for The Bat. West was as good as his word and the Toledo man found himself in Cleveland a few days later clearing a path for the actor at another car show.
“I kind of did everything,” he said about his duties. “I was to watch his back when anybody came onstage. The weird thing was that people would actually be pulling on [West’s] cape.”
For a whirlwind six months, St. John traveled with West to Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville, Indianapolis and other places to protect him from overzealous fans and witness firsthand the life of a star on a public appearance blitz.
“For its time, that Batman show affected so many people,” he said. “It’ll go down in history, and I think [West] was the right guy at the right time to do that. He’s a genuine person. He’s genuinely funny and he’s just a true, true gentleman.”
St. John left West’s employ to pursue his own path as a musician, actor, stuntman, magician and film producer, in part inspired by his time at Batman’s side.

Myron St. John

“Watching the people come up [to him] got me thinking to myself, ‘This is something I might like to do.’ You know, I wanted to do entertaining.”
According to the Internet Movie Database, “Besides a magician, St. John is also a hypnotist that toured as Dr. Silkini with the Buried Alive and Frozen Alive promotions. At one point did the first ever simulcast with an American and Mexican radio broadcast during a Frozen Alive promotion in Nogales Arizona/Nogales Mexico.”
On occasion, St. John found himself trying on West’s original Batman gear — the actor once even tried to get St. John to stand in for him, in costume — and years later played the role for children in hospital burn units. One story still impacts him to this day.
“They had one little boy,” St. John said. “He wasn’t in the burn unit; he got hit by a car and he had a broken leg. I go up there and the parents said, ‘He’s having nightmares,’ so, when I walked in the room, he’s lying down. He’s in his bed and he’s got his leg in a little cast. I noticed he had a Batmobile because he’s a Batman fan. I said, ‘Hey, champ,’ and he looked up at me, put his arms up, and I hug him … and I gave him a little Batman card that said, ‘If you’re ever in need, pull this card out, and I’ll be there.’ I left, and the dad came up to me and thanked me; he was crying. Well, a week later, I got a call [and they said] ‘That kid went home. He never had a nightmare since.’”
For the past 13 years, St. John has run the popular Haunted Prison Experience at the shuttered Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield, the same prison that was used in the filming of 1994’s “The Shawshank Redemption.”
“It’s show business,” he said. “You get it set up, and you get to scare the crap out of people, and watch them laugh and cry and run, and it’s fantastic. So, that’s what keeps me going.”
And his memories of being Batman’s bodyguard remain.
“The rewarding part of it was getting to work with a guy like Adam West when 10 years earlier I was watching him on TV, going, ‘Wow! Batman!’” he said. “And after the series was over, I’m with him there, standing there, and it’s like ‘Pinch me.’”

Within a matter of minutes, a teenage girl is impaled on a set of meat hooks; a spinning blade shreds the midsection of a wheelchair-bound paraplegic; and an innocent man is bludgeoned with a hammer and dragged away to face an even more vicious slaughter.

On Oct. 1, 1974, moviegoers nationwide experienced a cinematic horror unlike anything they had ever seen before.
Pegged as one of “America’s most bizarre and brutal crimes,” as a group of friends visiting their grandfather’s old farmhouse in rural Texas are hunted down, tortured and killed by a masked chain saw-wielding man-child and his family of deranged, malicious cannibals.
Internationally banned, bashed by critics and hailed by horror fans worldwide, Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre” was a colossal success, grossing more than $30 million and earning its rank as one of the most terrifying films of all time.
Now, nearly 40 years after the Sawyer family unleashed hell on Sally Hardesty and her ill-fated friends, Leatherface himself, Gunnar Hansen, opens up about the classic film, its place in history and the state of the horror genre itself in his new book, “Chain Saw Confidential: How We Made The World’s Most Notorious Horror Movie.”
‘Who will survive and what will be left of them?’
Published through Chronicle Books on Sept. 24, “Chain Saw Confidential” explores the grueling day-to-day production of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” as well as the film’s legacy and its reception among critics and horror fans.
“I started this book two years ago,” Hansen said. “I was approached by a publisher that wanted to do an autobiography. I didn’t want to do that; but, that got me thinking about this book. It was something I had been thinking of on and off for a long time. For me, I thought, this was the time to do it. Four of the five guys have died since the making of the film. And, this was something I thought that, if I did it right, this was a book a lot of people could find interesting.”
Hansen interviewed various cast and crew members for the book, including leading lady Marilyn Burns, who played Sally in the film.
“I really did not understand, until I interviewed Marilyn, the extent of her suffering; how the circumstances were really brutal for her,” Hansen said. “We all suffered, but it was nothing compared to what Marilyn was put through.”
The most notable example of Burns’ suffering outlined in the book was during production of the film’s climax: the infamous “dinner scene” where Sally is bound to a chair, tortured and taunted by Leatherface and company while pieces of cooked human flesh are presented as the nightly feast.
“She was terrified during the dinner scene because, as she put it, ‘I began to wonder, was this really a snuff film?’” he said. “She was tied to the chair at the table and all of that, I think, really scared her terribly.”
Hansen said filming that scene was both physically and mentally exhausting, shooting for close to 26 hours straight in temperatures exceeding 100 degrees.
“I also had to wear a coat at the dinner scene, on top of all of my other clothes and my wool pants,” he said. “And for 28 straight days, they wouldn’t wash my wardrobe. I wore the same clothes for these four weeks and they really smelled. The set itself smelled terrible during the dinner scene because everything was starting to rot.
“You put a film crew in there for 26 hours with a lot of light and everything smelled and I smelled the worst. One night, I was standing in the dinner line and one crew member told me to get out of line because I smelled so bad.”
With a schedule that required the cast and crew to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week, for four weeks, Hansen said he has plenty of memories of hellish temperatures, fractured bones and near-death experiences.
“During the chase scene, I fell with the live saw still running,” he said. “They had put 3-inch heels in my boots and I couldn’t see anything out of the mask unless it was directly in front of me. So, when I was running, I fell. And, when I fell, I pitched the live saw in the air. It went straight up and I couldn’t see it. So, I hit the ground and rolled over, and it landed beside me, still running.”
And what was the paycheck for the then 26-year-old Hansen? A modest $800, translating to roughly $2 per hour.
“I used to joke that I’d make more money if I’d worked at McDonald’s; and that actually turned out to be true,” he said, chuckling. “But it was a great experience, and I’ve been paid in many other ways.”
Hansen quit acting for roughly 10 years following a less-than-pleasurable experience on the 1977 horror film “The Demon Lover.”
“It was a brilliant example of incompetent filmmaking,” he said. “After that experience, I just didn’t want anything to do with the movie business. I didn’t like people I met, especially the producers, and I didn’t want to end up like them. So, I just started turning down movies. I turned down ‘The Hills Have Eyes.’”
In the years that followed he turned to writing, playing author to several books and documentary films, some of which he also produced and directed.
He returned to silver screen in 1988, starring as a Middle Eastern flesh peddler in “Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers,” a B-movie about a group of chain saw-wielding prostitutes who carve up their suitors as sacrifices for their cult.

GUNNAR HANSEN

Evil wears many faces
In the summer of 2011, Hansen returned to the old farmhouse for a family reunion of sorts, playing a cameo role in 2013’s “Texas Chainsaw 3D.” The film, labeled as a direct sequel to Hooper’s original, follows a young woman as she travels to the Lone Star State to collect a family inheritance, only to learn her distant relatives have a very dark past.
“It was really fun,” he said. “This was really a great experience because they had very carefully built a replica of the original house. The original house was moved and restored, and it’s a restaurant now. So they photographed it and measured everything and they rebuilt the house identical in the front and in the inside rooms we used.
“The first day I arrived, it was surreal because they dropped me off in front of the building so I had to walk up to the house. Even the trees looked the same, and we shot this one in Louisiana,” he said. “It was an eerie experience. It was as if it was 1973 again, even though it was really 2011.”
Before being cast in the cameo role, Hansen was asked to consider returning to the franchise to wield the chain saw once more. Hansen said he was initially flattered by the request, but recognized the real-life limitations brought on by the four decades since the original.
“In truth, I think I’m just too old,” he said. “It’s been 40 years. I’m 66 years old and I have an artificial knee. I think it would be hard to ever play Leatherface again … unless you’ve got Leatherface as this old guy in the shadows hobbling around. Leatherface is not going to be chasing around young blonde girls anymore.”Horror’s future
“Texas Chainsaw 3D” is but one of the many incarnations of the franchise. The 6-foot-4-inch Icelandic-born actor said he recognizes the Hollywood trend toward sequels, prequels and remakes in the horror genre. He said it boils down to mainstream studios cashing in on horror’s popularity, sacrificing originality and quality in the name of a quick profit.
“Really great horror comes from directors who are marginal,” he said. “Directors, if they don’t have a lot of money, aren’t going to be worried about offending people … The next Tobe Hooper is not going to be some studio-bred auteur. It’s going to be some kid who raises a few thousand dollars through friends and family, and makes a movie that shocks everybody. That’s where horror should be coming from.”
When it comes to the enduring legacy of “The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” Hansen said it is all about the cathartic value of the horror genre, which allows the audience to return to their normal lives after facing something truly frightening.
“There is this idea that you can put yourself into a position where you feel like you’re in danger but you’re not,” he said. “You get the fear that your life is right at that edge, but you know you’ll get off that roller coaster safe and sound. That’s why people like to go to scary movies. You are confronting something that is bigger than your life and that is deeply frightening. You walk out of the theater seeing something you didn’t want to see — seeing the shadow — and it is maybe something you didn’t really want to look at.”

A new “Big 3” has taken over women’s golf. Inbee Park, Suzann Pettersen and Stacy Lewis have dominated the LPGA Tour this season.

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Park, Pettersen and Lewis have accounted for 12 LPGA Tour wins, including all five major championships this season.

Park set the golf world buzzing earlier in the year by winning the first three majors on the LPGA Tour. Only Bobby Jones, Ben Hogan and Babe Zaharias won the first three majors of the golf season. Tiger Woods won three consecutive majors in 2000, but he did not win the Masters that year.

In addition to her three majors, Park had three wins on the LPGA Tour. She won early and often collecting her first win of the year at the Honda LPGA Thailand in February. Her second win came at the Kraft Nabisco Championship, the first major of the year.

Park finished fourth in the Lotte Championship, won the North Texas Shootout and was seventh at the Kingsmill Championship before missing her only cut of the season at the Pure-Silk Bahamas Classic.

She won her next three starts, the Wegman’s LPGA Championship, WalMart NW Arkansas Championship and the U.S. Women’s Open at Sebonack.

After winning her third consecutive major title at the U.S. Women’s Open, the media pressure on Park became stifling. She finished T-42 at the Ricoh Women’s British Open, T-67 at the Evian Championship and has only had one top-10 finish in her last eight events.

Park ascended to the No. 1 spot on the Rolex Rankings and with over $2.3 million in earnings also leads the LPGA Tour money list.

World No. 2 Pettersen began her run of strong play last fall when she won the KEB HanaBank and the Sunrise Championships back-to-back in October.

She continued to dominate this year and has 14 top-10 finishes in her 21 starts. She finished T-3 at the Kraft Nabisco Championship in April, won the Lotte Championship, finished third in Texas and was runner-up at Kingsmill in consecutive starts.

Pettersen was third at the Wegman’s LPGA Championship, missed the cut at the U.S. Women’s Open and finished T-4 in the Ricoh Women’s British Open.

Her real run of dominance began with a win at the Safeway Classic at the beginning of September. In her next start she won the final major of the year at the Evian Championship in France.

She continued with T-3 finishes at both the Sime Darby Championship in Malaysia and the KEB HanaBank Championship in China. Pettersen also successfully defended her title at the Sunrise LPGA Taiwan Championship last week.

Four wins, one a major, 14 top-10 finishes and $2.2 million in total earnings this year have firmly established Pettersen as a dominant force in women’s golf.

Lewis had four wins in 2012, topped the LPGA Tour money list and was the first American named LPGA Tour Player of the Year since 1994.

She continued her strong play this year with two wins in March at the HSBC Women’s Champions and the RR Donnelley Founders Cup. She moved past Yani Tseng to become the No. 1 ranked player in the Rolex Rankings and held the top spot for four weeks before Inbee Park began her major run.

Lewis added the second major title of career at the Ricoh Women’s British Open in August. She has been the most consistent player on the LPGA Tour with 16 top-10 finishes in 23 starts and has accumulated over $1.7 million in total earnings.

Park leads Pettersen and Lewis by over 200 points in the world rankings. These three have clearly separated themselves from the rest of the world. They lead the fourth spot, Lydia Ko, by over 250 points.

The LPGA Tour season is winding down and Pettersen is still seeking to beat Park for the tour money title.

These three ladies seem to be pushing one another to improve and golf fans are the beneficiary of their great play.

The Jacques-Cartier River alternately flows narrow and wide through its broad valley that bisects the scenic Laurentian Mountains. Numerous pristine natural areas such as Jacques-Cartier National Park are located just an hour or two away for most Quebecois — and Quebec visitors. Star photo by Art Weber

Not old as in stale. Think venerable. Well preserved. Exceptional. Quaint. Fascinating.
Canada’s seventh most populous city, one of the oldest and certainly the most European of all North American cities, is so well-preserved that it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Sure, there are plenty of museums strategically placed throughout Quebec City, but you don’t need to visit one to appreciate the experience. Old Quebec is history.
“The whole city is an open air museum,” said Michelle Demers, an expert guide with Quebec City Tourism. “Everything is very compact.”
Translation: Park your car and walk.
The narrow streets are wonderfully Old World and perfect for strolling — and a nightmare for the unwary to drive. Walking is better anyway. You can peer into shop windows, feel the history firsthand, be tempted by sidewalk cafes and stop and listen to street musicians. It’s all under the looming presence of the giant Fairmont Le Chateau Frontenac, the iconic Quebec structure built in 1893 and arguably the most photographed hotel in the world. It’s a great choice to overnight in one of the Frontenac’s 618 guest rooms, though there are other wonderful accommodations as well.
It was a stroke of strategic genius when French explorer Samuel de Champlain, the founder of New France, decided in 1608 to settle at the place along the St. Lawrence River called Quebec — the Algonquin word meaning “where the river narrows.” The site featured high cliffs that commanded views of everything that passed on the St. Lawrence River. It was destined that Britain and France would wrestle over its control.
Quebec would stay French until a great battle on the Plains of Abraham in 1759 took France out of the equation and left the British in control.
Except you wouldn’t know it today. French is the language and culture of choice virtually everywhere, though American tourists will find many Quebecois speak more than adequate English.
The Old City is still defined by its nearly three-mile-long walled fortifications, originally built in the early 1600s and improved by both the French and the British. Built to hold out enemies, the wall also marked a division between settlement and the frontier wilderness that, even today, can be found mere minutes from the city.
The grandeur of national parks, roaring rivers and great waterfalls, mountains and daunting ski slopes is just a stone’s throw away. Imagine strolling old neighborhoods and dining in fine restaurants, while being virtually next door to stunning natural beauty that is the home of moose, wolvws, mountain lions and lynx.
The city and nature meet on the tables of some of Quebec’s finest restaurants. Menus sport offerings like elk, caribou, trout and venison. Farm-to-table dining is favored resulting in selections that include surprises like sea buckthorn and bilberries. Extend the wild experience at Restaurant La Traite in Wendake, home of the Huron-Wendat Nation. The restaurant showcases First Nation cuisine and its menu has all of those plus eel and seal, all prepared with more than three dozen traditional native spices — black spruce and the like. La Traite is five-star.
For more information, visit www.bonjourquebec.com. Air connections to Quebec are readily available out of Detroit and Windsor. Canada’s VIA Rail system can be picked up in Windsor or other points including Toronto and Montreal, though timing of train departures may dictate overnighting along the way. Allow about 14 hours for the trip while traveling by car.

A new challenge has arrived for residents of Northwest Ohio — one that’s likely to make a splash. The Mud Dog Challenge will allow anyone to get down and dirty for a good cause.

Photo Courtesy Julie Earnest

E3 Events has set up a permanent mud run obstacle course near the Toledo Express Airport. Jeff and Julie Earnest, owners of E3 Events, said the course is one of the only permanent obstacle courses in the country.

They said they got the idea for the Mud Dog Challenge after seeing The Survival Race, a similar event. They owned property that was once a motocross track, and decided to transform it into the perfect mud course.

“We thought, ‘What a great way to get people off the couch … to exercise and have fun,’” Jeff said.

The Earnests spent time visiting other courses in the region to learn about mud runs and determine how they would build theirs. Jeff said they used every square foot of the property to develop an approximately three-mile (5K) track, while still leaving plenty of room for participants to park. The course winds around the property, taking participants back and forth for viewers to watch.

“[For] most mud runs, people take off and [viewers] don’t see them until the end,” Julie said. “Here, you see them most of the time.”

Photo Courtesy Julie Earnest

She said the course was designed so that most of the obstacles that are fun to watch are near the viewing area.

Obstacles include hills, a rock garden, a 12-foot wall to scale, a cargo net, hurdles, tunnels to crawl through and more. Some of the obstacles involve running or crawling through water, but the water will come fresh from a well and be drained after each event. Julie said there is no questionable source or standing water, which has caused participants to get sick at some other courses.

Other efforts to keep participants safe include keeping the restrooms away from the course area to avoid contamination, and a state-of-the-art shower system with a drain so participants aren’t standing in water as they rinse off.

The kickoff event is set for Nov. 2 and is open for anyone to participate or watch. They are planning a series of three events for the Mud Dog Challenge next year, although the dates have not yet been determined.

In addition to the Mud Dog events, the course will be available for companies, schools or other organizations to utilize for training, competitions and more.

But the course isn’t just an opportunity to have fun. Proceeds from the Nov. 2 event will benefit the Wounded Warrior Project, and the Earnests plan to run future events to benefit other organizations.

It’s also about promoting a healthy lifestyle. Instead of offering beer to participants, as some events do, It Works will be on site offering samples of their healthy beverages, Old Man Granola will be offer granola samples and City BBQ will be selling food. LA Fitness will provide each participant in the Nov. 2 event with two weeklong passes to their facility, and will do body mass index (BMI) tests for those interested. Dave’s Running will have coupons and gift bags for participants, too.

“[I think] it’s going to be a trigger for some people,” Julie said. “If I can get just one person to change their life because of what they do here, it’s a win.”

Participants won’t be required to run, though. They can jog or walk or any combination of all three. During a recent test run, 13 people from the Toledo Sports and Social Club tried out the course. The fastest person completed it in 23 minutes, while the slowest took about an hour. For future events, participants will start in waves of no more than 150 people every half hour to avoid crowding and long lines at the obstacles.

Registration for the Nov. 2 event is $69 if participants register the day of the run. They can also register online at www.muddogchallenge.com to save $10, or use coupon code MudRunFun for a registration fee of only $30.

Participants will receive a T-shirt, a custom medal, a bib and timing chip for company wellness programs, and free access to all photos taken of them during the run. Anyone can attend to watch for free; they only have to pay $10 for parking.

The run will last from 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. The course is located at 10631 Airport Highway, Swanton, adjacent to the Toledo Express Airport.